1 66 OLD ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. 



cruel, iii. altar cloths, i. cope of cruel, iii. towells, ii. corporalis 

 with iii. cases, i. crosse of copper, i. cruyt of lead, i. bible with 

 a book of comonen." There, in safe keeping and in actual use 

 in the church were these outward indications of the services in 

 these days. And let us notice, a little later, at least two vicars, one 

 Gervase Wheldon, described in one document as " a man of 

 no good repute.'' He conformed, we observe, to Cromwell's 

 Director}-, until outward conformity was no longer accepted. 

 Daniel Shelmerdine, trained in the Presbyterian Classis at 

 YVirksworth, was his worthy successor; one of the best of the 

 new men whom Cromwell thrust into the vacant livings. In 

 five years he was put out by the pressure of the Act of 

 Uniformity. From those days the stream of church life has 

 flowed on with few interruptions. 



. As for the people themselves, who form our industrial groups, 

 they have passed, no doubt, through many changes, but there 

 is, perhaps, nothing more surprising than the tenacity with which, 

 through centuries, they have clung to the soil, and have resisted 

 all unsettling and disturbing forces. -The Sales, the Bancrofts, 

 the Mathers, the Whitakers, the Camps, the Sharpes, the 

 Holmes, the Kirkmans, the Garretts, the Bucknalls and others, 

 have been with us, as the Registers intimate, for the past 

 two hundred and fifty years. Who knows at what early period 

 some of these first settled down here ? The " Godwine " who 

 appears in the Domesday Survey relating to Barrow has his 

 modern representative, in name at least, in " Goodwin," the 

 village grocer, who is doubtless quite unconscious of his Saxon 

 ancestry. The stability of the families must have favoured a 

 regular and continuous growth. 



The rise of large estates has led to the decay and destruction 

 of many dwellings. The small holdings have well-nigh dis- 

 appeared, and those below the level of farmer, excepting the 

 grocer, the smith, and the carpenter, are reckoned as labourers, 

 who receive a weekly wage and live in a cottage, to which in 

 some cases a little strip of ground is attached. In Barrow 

 there are also small allotments, cheaply rented, which are a 



